Micah 3:12 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

By this it appears that this sermon was preached to Judah and its governors, priests, and prophets, who were thus wicked in Ahaz's time, and probably continued so in the beginning of Hezekiah's time. Jeremiah puts this out of all doubt, Jeremiah 26:18, saying that Micah spake these words to all Judah. As for the time, it was in all likelihood before the thirteenth year of Hezekiah, say some; I rather think it was in the very beginning of Hezekiah, and that this might awaken them of that age to comply with Hezekiah in the reformation. Zion here is threatened as endangered, nay ruined, by the sins of magistrates, priests, and prophets: they thought that Zion should be their safety, however they sinned; God by his prophet assures them the quite contrary, their sins should be the danger and destruction of Zion. For your sake; because your sins are so great and many. God would have spared Sodom for the sake of righteous men, these may be safety to a city; but God will not spare the wicked for any place's sake, nor shall a temple be more security to a wicked people than heaven was to sinning angels. Though these flagitious men cried out against Micah, and suchlike men, as a public danger, truth is, the injustice, idolatry, and inhumanity of public persons were the great danger. Ploughed as a field; either by the enemy and conqueror, thereby forbidding it to be ploughed without his leave, or by such as remained after the body of the people were carried captive. Jerusalem, one of the goodliest cities of the world, proud in its lofty and beautiful buildings, the city of the great King, shall become heaps; shall all lie in rubbish, its stately buildings shall be demolished and lie buried in their own ruins. The mountain of the house, holy mountain, on which the temple, one of the wonders of the world, did stand, beautified with rarest buildings, as the high places of the forest; shall lie so long waste as to be run over with wood as a forest, and be a lodge of wild beasts.